Route 66: 2010

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Paisano European Tour 2010 - Day 8

Day 8 is September 14

Hello and Welcome to a New & Beautiful Day!

Momma and I had a pretty good night's sleep and a good breakfast. Now, we’re ready for the day! We've got our stuff packed and we're ready to go. We decided to take the bus this morning rather than a taxi because those are a touch expensive and the bus stop was only about a block away from the hotel. Here we go again, dragging our luggage down the street. Hey, maybe we just look like well dressed homeless folks or maybe just those "touristy"American folks.

I swear, I REALLY tried, but I couldn't find anywhere to buy a ticket. I guess we should just consider that minor payback for some of the previous days’ hassles. Once we got to the Bahnhof we were sitting around

waiting for our train to Interlaken. We kept looking around, thinking and stressing about Lucerne to Interlaken part of our trip. While this was going on, the Golden Pass Line train was actually sitting right there. Well, I finally decided "What the Heck" and walked up & asked the very nice porter gentleman there if there was some possible way we could get on this train, rather than going to Interlaken first. To my surpirse, (and relief, too) he said "No problem, you can take this train". Yay!! All that AND we got first class all the way. We did end up changing trains a couple of times but that was Totally not our fault and things were really fine. Our last "special" train of the trip; I believe it was from Ziewiess was Awesome!

On the Golden Pass Line we were sitting in the middle of 1st class & the porter(ess), lady told us we had paid for the front of the train; that Absolutely ROCKED! Our seats were in the very, very way far up front area. The train driver(is that engineer? pilot? wagon master?) was right above us, so we had an unobstructed view & it was just like driving. Rock On! I think I got some pretty great pictures, (Momma did, too), from that part of the ride. Being Right On the rails and sitting there in the front was simply Amazing. The feeling of seeing Everything that was on the track was a chance of a lifetime. I'm SO glad I got the opportunity to share that with Momma.

As we were rolling towards Montreux; I, of course, had “Smoke on the Water” in my head the whole way there. Once we arrived in Montreux, we still had to head to Lausanne because we actually did some research on that & determined that it would be cheaper to stay in Lausanne. After de-training, (that's like de-planing, only not). By the way; "de-plane" is NOT the same as De Plane! for the little guy on Fantasy Island. Anyway, we got off the train, luggage pulling along behind and checked with the rail ticket counter.

Well, we checked on the Chocolate Train trip that we had been looking forward to and one of the reasons we decided to stay 2 nights in Lausanne and well, you guessed it…sold out! UFB. We were told we “could” have booked it the day before…Arggghhhh! Why do I feel like I've been here before??

So, after I come down from my stress high, we got our tickets that we needed to get us to Lausanne. The train was packed with school kids, but the view along Lake Geneva was pretty cool. In about 20 minutes or so, we arrived at the station in Lausanne. Once again, we're off dragging our luggage across the train station and up the ramp on the other side. As we've been doing in the past, we decided to grab a taxi to the hotel rather than trying to figure out how to get one the right bus or metro.

Our cab driver got us to Hotel Crystal, our new home away from home for the next two nights. Our cabby was, well, kind of a "turd". He got us there safe and sound but refused to take Euro for the fare. OK, I understand we are in Switzerland, but everyone else was OK with it & gave us change back in Francs and had no problems with it. I had to go into the hotel & get change. Heck, even the gentleman at the front desk was frustrated with the cabby.

We got ourselves checked in & are nearly done for now. The guy at the front desk is very cool. He said something as I was signing in & I answer “si”. Of course, I feel like an idiot but he just laughs and says “it’s OK, I am from Italy.” Things are back and going well again. He gave us free tickets for metro/buses for our 2 night stay. We finished up with the check-in & relax a bit. After a little rest we decided to head across the street for dinner at a French restaurant. The food was really pretty good. The service was, well… I feel like I'm really struggling here because I struggle because my French is pretty much non-existant.

After dinner we set out for a walk & pictures. We walked up around the cathedral and out too far and of course, got lost, (again). I would have been upset, but I decided it was not a big deal.

That is, not a big deal except I feel bad that I’m dragging Momma all over, not quite Everywhere, but certainly Switzerland. We finally found our way back to the hotel, head upstairs and call it a day.